Harvard historian discusses brainwashing in the digital age

Cascade PBS Ideas Festival

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In a live taping of Radiolab, co-host Latif Nasser and guest Rebecca Lemov discuss prominent examples of indoctrination and their modern implications.

As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in late May, Latif Nasser, co-host of WNYC’s Radiolab, sat down with Harvard historian Rebecca Lemov to dig into her new book, The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper-Persuasion.

The book chronicles the fascinating and traumatic history of brainwashing – how the term originated, its chilling permutations over the decades and what it could mean now in an age of artificial intelligence.

In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, Nasser and Lemov discuss the origin story of the term, following the experiences of American POWs during the Korean War. They then delve into the remarkable story of the heiress Patricia Hearst, who survived kidnapping and violence by adopting the perspectives of her captors. Finally, they discuss the “mass emotional contagion” of social media events and the AI chatbots with whom many people have formed very real relationships.

This conversation was recorded on May 31, 2025.

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Credits

Host: Paris Jackson

Producer: Sara Bernard, Scot Michael

Event producers: Jake Newman, Anne O'Dowd

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